Operation Trojan Horse, Black Opps insertion into Kuwait.

I am surprised that this story has not been discussed on ATS, it involves the taking of hostages a covert black ops insertion into a war zone and then
a Prime Minister lying about the whole sordid operation.

It starts late on August 1st 1990 in Heathrow airport just before the boarding of British Airways Flight 149 (BA 149). BA 149 a Bowing 747 with 367
passengers on board and was destined to head travel overnight from Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur via Kuwait. Prior to take off it became apparent that the
tension between Iraq and Kuwait was reaching braking point and requested a security briefing. The pilot believed based on media reports that the
invasion of Kuwait was imminent he was assured however that the situation on the ground was normal based on information provided to him by the head of
BA Security for the region who had received his information form the Foreign office. It has since transpired that the man who was head of Security at
BA at the time was also once the Station Chief for MI6 in Kuwait, the first of a few interesting coincidences.

As the passengers boarded their plane the pilot remained concerned about his refuelling stop at Kuwait. Not all of the passengers on this flight where
normal flyers, among them included the Security Chief of Kuwait who was rushing back to his country and about 6 young men who sat at the rear of the
plane (much more on them to come). Just before take off the pilot decided to delay the flight citing a minor technical fault in the hope that by the
time it was fixed they would be ordered to stay away from Kuwait however this never happened rather he only secured the fate of his colleagues and
passengers and the flight took off without any change to its flight plan.

Meanwhile as BA 149 was in the air satellite reconnaissance from the Pentagon showed Iraqi ground forces moving into Kuwait and confirmed the invasion
by 02:00 on August 2nd. This information reached the British Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher at 03:00 hours. Iraq had invaded Kuwait.

Meanwhile BA 149 remained on course, the pilot continued to request security update’s for Kuwait. While in the air a interesting conversation took
place between one of the air stewards and the 6 young men who had sat at the back of the plane. The steward noted that they along with a few other
passengers where to disembark at Kuwait and in accordance with local law offered them a “landing card” to get them into the country. One of the
six men reportedly said “ahh, we don’t need that mate, don’t think so”. To many this would seem meaningless however the cover for these men
was that they were an oil worker. Regular oil workers would know that this was a requirement and not be so dismissive. This began to raise some
eyebrows amongst the crew.

By the early hours of the morning all other flights destined for Kuwait where diverted with one notable exception, BA 149. At approximately 04:10
local time, as tanks were entering not Kuwait city the flight touched down. The passengers that were to disembark included the Kuwaiti security Chief
and the 6 mysterious young men and a couple few other passengers. Witnesses noted some tension amongst these men as they waited for their bags, which
according to witnesses looked like “equipment” rather than clothing.

What would happen next was catastrophic, the Iraqi’s began bombing the airport the all the passengers disembarked form the aircraft and where then
taken hostage by the Iraqi Army. All this is with a few notable exceptions, the 6 young men.

It has since been discovered that these young men where part of what was called Operation Trojan Horse. Who exactly they where is a mystery Stephen
Davis who wrote a book on this flight has claimed they were members of the super-secretive “Increment”, a deniable branch of MI6 made up of ex
special forces guys. The remit of this operation was to observe Iraqi troop movements specifically in relation to any move towards Saudi-Arabia in two
man teams.

One of these two man teams became compromised when after a week one of the men on the team developed food poisoning. His partner realised that he had
no choice but to extract as the other man was becoming seriously ill. As such an American War ship in the Gulf was called on to send in a Black Hawk
to extract the men. The special forces solider carried his friend for 15 miles through hostile desert to get him to the helicopter. The former captain
of that ship has confirmed that this extraction did take place he says that he was ordered to arrange for a medical evacuation of two British Special
Forces men from Kuwait. Apparently the other team also had to be extracted after 3 weeks however the final team remained inside Kuwait city until
allied forces liberated Kuwait.

To be clear this is not a conspiracy, this actually happened. The British Government knowingly sent British and American nationals into Kuwait as a
cover for a Special Forces insertion which resulted him them being held as human shields for months. A member of that team has spoken out about what
happened, the Captain of a American warship who extracted members of the team has spoken out and even the American Ambassador to Kuwait at the time
has said that he was told about a British Intelligence team operating inside Kuwait.

When Margret Thatcher was asked about this in parliament as to why the plane was allowed to land she said it landed after the invasion to parliament.
This was a blatant lie, she know of the invasion at 0300 and the plane landed at 0400.

I remember when this first broke. It wasn't spread around a lot, but it was talked about quietly. Their timing sucked beyond belief but it's about
what I would expect from a Spec Ops insertion that was supposed to be kept quiet.

To be totally honest I'm not surprised about the lack of info. It was a covert Op that went south. This isn't something Governments usually like to
discuss even less so if it fell apart. It's a very interesting read though. I had heard something about this a few years ago but not too many
details.

While you get a lot of insertions by sea or night jumps, it's also pretty common to infiltrate as flight crew, replacement workers, tourists, or
diplomatic personnel.

We used to insert SF into Russia as workers for embassies - waiters, cooks, electricians and the like. They knew it, too, and would follow everyone
around, so you would contrive to give them a lot to follow by everyone leaving the embassy about the same time and scattering like quail, riding the
subway, going to government buildings and the like, timed for their shift changes to add confusion.

Generally you'd get caught and PNGd eventually.

But the tourist thing goes on a lot, too, where you can get in as a Canadian or whatnot. Not that many years ago an entire A-team was infiltrated as a
religious tour group into a middle eastern country for the purpose of locating someone, they did it, too, but got caught exfiltrating when a local
contact ratted them out. The US let it die down in the news and traded for them.

edit to add:

About the same time as the operation you describe, there was a pretty large op out of Alabama that moved a bunch of SF into the region as part of an
aircraft delivery. The regular delivery guys stayed home and were mostly replaced by three A teams. They had to stage it out of a commercial airport
in Montgomery, AL. It was sort of entertaining watching them try to look civilian and non-chalant. It doesn't help you if all the guys are dressed in
exactly the same t-shirts, shoes, and blue jeans, and all the jeans, sunglasses and Nikes are new and the same type. And everyone has on "the watch".

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